The budget process and strategic civic interventions

A research project conducted by mr. Frank Jenkins, advisor to the South African parliament

Tags: Africa, South Africa, Civil Society Building
Additional tags: Budget process governance civil society building migrants

The focus of this research, carried out by Mr. Frank Jenkins, is on addressing poverty reduction and protecting the rights of migrants and refugees through participation in parliamentary processes as envisaged in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. Specifically, the paper will explore how strategic interventions in the budget process can facilitate participation by civil society in other parliamentary processes such as passing legislation – i.e. translation of policy into laws – and overseeing the implementation of legislation relevant to the issues of poverty reduction, and migrants and refugees. The paper will also propose a model that could be used to measure performance of civil society organisations aiming to impact of poverty reduction and migrant and refugee rights.

Civic society organisations, including those with the vision or strategic objective to influence or engage with government policies pertaining to poverty reduction or migrant and refugee affairs, have a constitutional right – as opposed to a point of political leverage – to participate in the legislative and oversight processes of Parliament and provincial legislatures. In practice however, this is not an easy process, not in the least because of the complexity of budgetary and legislative processes.
Participation by civil society organisations in these annual processes should highlight certain focus areas, such spending patterns that impact on the protection, promotion and fulfilment of fundamental rights, including socio-economic rights. Both the issues of poverty reduction as well as the protection of vulnerable groups – such as migrants, asylum seekers and refugees – could be addressed by such strategic interventions. Whilst it is difficult to measure the performance of civil society on the impact of strategic interventions based on the outcome of legislation, it is possible to measure such performance on the participation of civil society in the range of processes that present opportunities to make strategic interventions. In other words, a civil society organisation should be able to present a performance plan indicating where and when it envisages making strategic interventions, which plan would form part of the measurable objectives or key performance areas of the organisation.
In addition to highlighting critical areas in this process where strategic interventions from civil society organisations are viable, the research paper aims to provide a model that can be used to measure the level of participation of civil society organisations – in terms of consistency – as well as the responsiveness of government.
This study has three main links to the themes outlined in the knowledge programme plan for the Southern Africa region. First, the paper focuses on relevant issues of poverty reduction, migrants and refugees. Second, the paper will explore how strategic interventions in the budget process can facilitate participation by civil society in other parliamentary processes such as passing legislation – i.e. translation of policy into laws – and overseeing the implementation of legislation. A third link is that it proposes to develop a model that could be used to measure performance of civil society organisations and of the government.